IcyCool said:
The question is, do you think genocide is humanity's only option?
It's something I thought about before the episode ever aired. The humans have lost their base of operations. They have very little access to resources to replace what they're expending, so their successful flight from the Cylons has a limited possible duration.
Their rate of replacing deaths through battle, Cylon infiltrators nuking entire spaceships, accidents etc. is much lower than the death rate on the show, as displayed by the consistently dropping numbers at the beginning of every episode. Aside from the one time they celebrated the birth of a new human, and the discovery of the Pegasus and crew, that number has been dropping. And at the current point in the show it's been what....a year?
Admittedly, there are further births (and deaths) occurring offscreen, which are not displayed to the viewer. But the number is curving down slowly, or in big leaps, like when Cloud Nine was destroyed, etc.
The Cylons seemed to relent for a while, then changed their minds, and basically attempted to enslave the humans. Let's not mince words about this either. The Cylons were *not* peaceful collaborators or "guides" or anything. The president of the 12 planets made a decision not to sign a document ordering the execution of a bunch of humans, and they put a gun to his head. When one side has the guns, and uses it to coerce the other side, it is not true collaboration or peace. It's occupation, plain and simple.
Whether or not the Cylons are alive, or actually human, is also debatable. Sure, they can think. But in the absence of intervention by crossbreeding with humans, which apparently has a very low success rate, they can't reproduce themselves biologically. They can only build new bodies. They're just silicon machines, like the replicants in Bladerunner.
Given what happened the last time they tried to live peacefully, do the humans have any reason to believe that things would go differently the next time? Dare they take the chance of settling on yet another Earth-like planet? What if the Cylons land again, and this time manage to take out the BSG? It would be either slavery without end, or the extermination of humanity.
Alternatively, they can hope that there is some truth to the legends of Earth, and that the planet actually exists. Given the apparently time that's passed since the last contact with Earth, what are the chances anything would be left in the first place? How great are their chances of finding Earth in the first place?
Now, if they actually *do* find Earth, what will they find? Their distant cousins, at a comparable level of technological sophistication, waiting with arms open for their brothers to return? A burned out planet, exhausted of resources, with piddling populations of humans left, and scraping by? Maybe a well-established population who don't *want* their brothers to come back. Or worst case, the Cylons are simply following and driving the BSG survivors *hoping* that they return to Earth, so that the Cylons can turn around and wipe out *all* humans now that they've discovered where the homeplanet is?
Again, that's taking an awful big chance.
With the information that the crew of BSG and the survivors of the 12 colonies have at hand, I'm not honestly sure that they have many choices. They can't defeat the Cylons in open battle, as they're seriously outgunned, and the law of averages dictates that during one of these conflicts, they won't get lucky. And then it's over. Because of that, they'd be foolish to try and win in open battle. Meaning, they have to do something that catches the Cylons by surprise, and something like a superweapon, bioweapon, or whatever may be one of the only ways to achieve that surprise.
It's a choice between a horrible choice, and an even worse choice, when it comes down to it.
Banshee
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